Consideration has been given to the possibility of graded laminates based on aluminium and titanium alloys and their composites.In addition to increased toughness, damping, and fatigue crack growth resistance, laminates produced by diffusion bonding may provide a cost effective route to the utilisation of advanced materials in lightweight high stiffness structures.MST/3008 macrolaminates: alternating layers of thin metal sheet and fibre reinforced polymers; compoglas: glass matrix ceramic· reinforced composite; polymets: metal matrix polymer reinforced hybrids produced via extrusion of metal powders and thermoplastics; conductive segregated-network composites (CSNC): polymers containing three-dimensional contiguous metallic network to provide electrical conductivity Possible combinations of various materials used in the production of hybrid material composites (After Ref. 1) AI-Li alloy laminates 2 exhibit improved specific strength and stiffness. However, these laminates will be limited by the polymer matrix to relatively low operating temperatures.Various types of all metal laminates have been reported, but none have been exploited in high performance structures. Laminates manufactured via roll bonding 4 ,5 or explosive welding 6 involve considerable reductions in thickness and the lack of suitable feedstock and the incompatibility between these processing routes and materials processing parameters severely limits the combination of materials that can be used and the selection of thickness of individual layers. Attempts to obtain improved fatigue resistance compared with Al alloy sheet via explosive welding of Ti alloy onto an Al core were unsuccessfu1. 6 Both roll bonding and explosive welding were limited by interfacial contamination.As a result of these problems studies of laminates based upon advanced materials such as Ti alloy IMI 834, the AI-Li alloy metal matrix composites (MMCs) or the Ti-aluminides, have not been attempted.However, the 330/0 increase in fatigue strength and 1000/0 increases in fracture toughness of simple roll bonded laminated Ti alloy sheet 2 are indications of the potential for laminated metallic materials.In this paper a more innovative approach is suggested. The objective is to combine thin alloy sheet and composites via advanced material processing to produce lightweight metallic laminates allowing exploitation of desirable material properties while minimising the effects of less desirable properties. One of the problems in the design of multiple layer laminates is the selection of the layer volume fractions for an optimum combination of properties. This paper will